Day 3: Fail Meal

At least the day started well. There were chocolate chip pancakes (seriously, next time please remind me to halve that recipe) and tea for breakfast, and a really yummy salmon salad sandwich for lunch (with blackberries on the side!). And I'd thought all day about the dinner I'd started prepping last night, and how delicious it was going to be. Except it just wasn't. It was the opposite of delicious - not exactly what I'm looking for in a meal.

So dinner was supposed to be roast chicken with Spanish paprika and herb-roasted smashed potatoes. I used fresh thyme from my new little herb garden in back; I prepped the chicken last night, per the instructions; I used a whole bag of pretty little potatoes. It even looked pretty decent - all of the paprika that the chicken had been essentially marinating in for 24 hours made it nice and red, and the potatoes had lovely crinkly skins, and even though this picture is sideways it still looks pretty appetizing!



Unfortunately, what you can't see is that it tasted like a salt lick, and was virtually inedible. I took off the skin, which helped, and gingerly ate the insides of some of the potatoes, but still felt like I was wading through the Dead Sea with my mouth wide open. Plus, I somehow forgot that I had meant to steam an artichoke, and was so mad at this meal that I just decided to scrap the whole thing. The potatoes are gone. The now skinless chicken is sulking in the fridge; maybe if it's nice I'll turn it into a sandwich, but it's going to have to lose some of the attitude before I'll even consider it.

For the record, I know what I did wrong. The recipe calls for ten total pounds of chicken. "That's way too much for just one little me," I thought, "so I'll use four large thighs instead and still have some leftovers." While it was a good plan to scale down, I forgot to adjust the seasoning accordingly, which means I used about four times too much salt as I should have. My fault, then, not the recipe's.

I knew there was going to be a Fail Meal - I just didn't want it to be this one. And if I'm being honest, I'm sure there'll be several more before this month is through.

Salmon Salad
1 4-6 ounce salmon fillet
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Mayonnaise
Capers
Green Onions

Preheat the broiler. Drizzle the salmon with olive oil; add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer it to a foil-lined baking pan, skin side down; broil for 7-9 minutes, or until the salmon flakes and is no longer translucent in the middle. Watch the salmon closely; the fattiness of the fish and the oil can cause smoke, which can cause your overly sensitive smoke detector to go off, which can cause you, at 7:45 in the morning, to wave folded up newspaper furiously under the smoke detector (while wearing only a towel) in the hopes that you can get the damn thing to shut up. The towel is optional.

When the salmon is done; flake it into a bowl. When it's cool, add a dollop of mayonnaise, along with capers, green onions, or other mixings to taste. Mix well; this should have the consistency of tuna salad.